I fail to see how anything is glaringly illegal. There are several departments and including a legal department full of attorneys who approve every contract and contract amendment. State laws also may vary. In this state any design professional service contract is not considered a bid and must...
No I think you misunderstood me there. We weren’t even into preliminary design at that point but rather had only completed the drainage study and had a conceptual plan. It was just the proposal for the preliminary plans that had to be tweaked to fit the new location. The net change was zero...
Every state has different rules about soliciting this type of work. In this state engineering design is not allowed to go out to bid but must be a qualifications based approach where cost is not allowed to be a factor except that it must be “reasonable”. The way the scope was written allowed the...
The changes to the location to the project happened well after the selection so no problem there. I am not saying that it is a conflict or unethical for him to review or critique this work, but I am saying that I personally would have recommended someone else that I know and have confidence in...
There is a public information office, but they usually do not get involved in technical queries. We’re a fairly small organization even though we do represent a growing rural/suburban community with a population of about 250,000.
Once legal action is threatened, communication is usually severed...
I find myself in an unsettling position on a project and I am left searching for how to proceed. I work for a public entity that sought qualification-based proposals from engineering firms to study a drainage problem and design a solution for the neighborhood. The work actually hinged on...
There's a free DOS WEAP program called WEAP87 that was developed for FHWA floating around. It's an old DOS program so it's not user friendly and you will have to run a DOS emulation program to run it. It has a full manual written for it in great detail.
It was written in the 70's so it was...
It depends on a few factors I think.
How many piles are to be driven in total, all phases? Are these 4 representative of 2% of production piles? How many borings were taken and how consistent is the soil strata?
Assuming lrfd was used, what resistance factor was selected to determine the pile...
I am new to pile driving and had a bridge project with a soil profile of 53' of very soft silty clay followed by layers of sandy clay with progressively higher SPT count, but nothing dense for all 100' of the boring. Geotechnical report recommended 84' long 16-inch PPC piles with 136 ton...
It somewhat depends on what you are doing and what the accuracy requirements are on the job.
RTK GPS surveying has the ability to have approx. 0.1' accuracy at a 95% confidence level. However, there are many field conditions where you will not get this kind of accuracy. I have seen grading...
You know I've never really understood the requirements in South Florida. I guess maybe it is an admission that there is not way to be able to route a 100-year storm through a detention system that won't cause negative effects (nuisance flooding but not catastrophic property damage). People in...
Autodesk SSA is built on SWMM5 and has a very similar interface. To enter a user defined flow you must click on a node and then click on the button next to external inflows. You would then enter a baseline inflow of how ever many cfs inflow you want. This is same area you would enter sanitary...
I would say it depends on the size of the municipality and description of the job.
Since the term Floodplain is in the title, I would think the position pertains more toward a regulatory role. In such a role you would likely enforce ordinances, make recommendations for new ordinances or...
